I kinda like some charities. Not the ones that show up once a year to stand in front of shopping centre doors and ring obnoxious bells at you. The quiet ones that never come near you in person, and send you things in envelopes instead.

I like these charities because, well, they’re not annoying me in person. And because some of them send me pre-printed address labels with their donation solicitations. At the rate I’m going, I may never have to actually write my return address ever again.

I’’m beginning to come to the conclusion that you can judge a charity just based on the number and quality of free preprinted address labels they send you. I’m not sure what sort of judgment one can have about them but there’s one to be made.

I’ve only received labels from five charities so far, but I suppose that’s enough. For now.

I’ll list them before I get into any numbers….

• The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society
• March of Dimes
• The Nature Conservancy
• Paralyzed Veterans of America
• PeTA

I think that’s roughly alphabetical.

Just based on numbers, March of Dimes comes in first. I didn’t bother to actually count, but I think that they sent me slightly more than 72, which is what the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society sent me. I also got a few stickers, which I assume are intended to ‘seal’ the envelopes with, or something. I’m not entirely sure, but I got those stickers from both of these charities.

In third for numbers is the Paralyzed Veterans of America, who sent me 60 mailing labels. No stickers.

Then comes the Nature Conservancy with a sheet of twenty.

Dead last is PeTA, even though they sent me two sheets of labels at two different times. Each sheet only had eighteen preprinted labels, and two very large stickers that aren’t appropriate for that whole ‘sealing the envelope’ thing. These stickers are the same on both sheets. One reads “I’m an ele-friend. Circuses are no fun for animals.” The other, “Animals in Laboratories. Unseen They Suffer Unheard They Cry In Agony They Linger In Loneliness They Die PeTA”

All the words are written exactly like that. Well, not exactly. The lowercase ‘e’ is actually the size of the P and the T, but I don’t care. I think that their logo is a wonderfully unintentional subliminal message regarding exactly how important the ‘ethical’ part is to them.

Anyway….

I don’t count them as being higher, even though I got two sheets of eighteen, because each sheet came in a different mailing. If they’d sent me 26 all at once, they’d be higher than the Nature Conservancy.

That’s just quantity, though. Now comes quality, because the spiffiness of the address label just has to be a big factor.

Number one is a tough one, but I’m going to have to go with the Paralyzed Veterans of America. Their labels are the gold-foil type metallic shiny ones. Very fancy. The rest just sent plain ones.

Next comes the Nature Conservancy. While they didn’t send very many, half of their labels had a drawing of an incredibly ugly baby bird that they were trying to get me to donate money to save. That’s just cool.

March of Dimes is a reluctant third. Their labels have rather childish crayon drawings.

Fourth is the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. Theirs have Ziggy on them. I’m not entirely thrilled by them.

Fifth, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, is PeTA again. Not because I don’t like PeTA. This is absolutely based on quality, not my dislike for the group.

The reason they’re fifth is because their address labels are obviously printed out on some cheap printer somewhere in their main office. They’re all off-centre. The second sheet, they were actually on a slant. They’re just feeding these pre-printed [with the pictures and colours] sheets of labels into a Lexmark and cranking out labels like that.

At least the other charities had the decency to pay a professional to make their labels. If I wanted crappy, off-centre, slanty address labels, I’d go buy an old typewriter and some of that OfficeMax label type paper and type them myself.

I’m not entirely sure what this all works out to. I didn’t think ahead that far, actually. I do know that PeTA works out to be last, and I’d have to go with the PVA for the first. The other three lurk in the middle somewhere, I guess, because I’m not really sure how to balance the very-few-but-cool and the whole-lots-but-not-so-cool to figure out what order they go in.

It really doesn’t matter, in the end. Just so long as I’m getting lots and lots of free address labels. I like free. I like not having to write out my address. These things are good.

The only thing that could be better – and not by much, mind you – would be if the envelopes included with bills were postage-prepaid. And possibly self-sealing, without the damned licky-glue, because bill envelopes never taste good.